YWAM Canada- An Elder's Musings

The sub-title for Signs of Emergence by Kester Brewin hints at a unique approach to understanding church in our current rapidly changing culture. Brewin sub-titles his central thesis as "A Vision for Church That Is Organic/ Networked/ Decentralized/ Bottom-up/ Communal/ Flexible {Always Evolving}." This is a fresh perspective and contributes positively to some of the world-wide discussion of what is dubbed the "emergent church movement/discussion/debate." The inherent problem with labeling is to prejudice a work before it has been thoughtfully engaged. There is a tendency in using "emergent" and "church" in the same sentence for those who are convince this is an important discussion of Christian relevance to jump on the band wagon and declare this work to be an important step forward. It is equally problematic for those who line up opposing the notion of church as emerging to be naysayers and dismiss the work prematurely. It is precisely

This past summer I have been reading a book called Theory U-Leading from the Future as it Emerges by Otto Scharmer. On the one hand this has been a fascinating probe into the realities of spiritual perceptions. I have taken some of his insights and used them to good advantage in teaching. I will use one of his diagrams in a Christianized version later in this blog to highlight the process of changing one's thinking. However, the other part of this book has been extremely frustrating. The source of this frustration is that I believe Scharmer has "insight extraordinaire" for what we would call "walking in the spirit wisdom". The reason this is frustrating is that there is no claim on Scharmer's part to having received much input from Christian sources, rather his spirituality is decidedly post-modern, a blend of reflective and meditative practices from a wide variety of sources, none overtly Christian (and none explicitly anti-Christian). So, the end

March 2007 Last week I spent a very stimulating week at the YWAM North American Council Meetings at the Leadership Learning Center in Richmond, Virginia. These meetings had an unexpected spin to them, since Jim Stier, the YWAM Americas Field Director, was present to facilitate some major dialoging regarding the values we aspire to as a sodality in North America. The bulk of this letter will focus on the process we went through and a very insightful early morning trip to the Airport. What Does a YWAM Base Leader Need to Do? Early Sunday morning Dmitri from the Richmond base picked us up to shuttle the “early-birds” to the airport. During the course of our ride Dmitri (originally from Belarus) asked me for the 3 most important things a YWAM base leader needs to know to survive some of the rigors of YWAM community leading. I surprised myself with three clearly articulated insights and I ha